Super Visa applications for visitors to Canada are often rejected

Caught up in the immigration backlog to sponsor her mom and dad to Canada permanently, Emma Canizales was thrilled to learn of Ottawa’s new visa to facilitate her parents’ visits.

The so-called Super Visa allows eligible individuals to travel in and out of Canada to visit their family here over a 10-year period — with up to two years for each stay — while their sponsorship applications are processed.

“We met all the requirements and had no doubt my parents would get the visa,” said Canizales, who came to Toronto from Honduras in 2001 and now works as an accountant in Vancouver.

When the new visa was announced in November, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney touted it as the “most generous” visa provision for travellers to Canada.

“Even if they’ve been waiting for several years for a permanent residency application, they will be able to come to Canada for extended visits, so long as they meet the health care and other requirements,” Kenney said at the time.

That obviously isn’t true for Canizales, whose father Jose Alfredo Canizales Giron, 70, and mother Emma Luisa Fonseca De Canizales, 69, recently got a refusal letter from Citizenship and Immigration Canada. The couple had applied to join their family here in 2008 under family reunification.